Re: Looking for a book on databases (in general)

An Introduction to Database Systems by C J Date
(ISBN: 0201385902 )
Get this classic, take time to learn & understand each of the fundamental
princuples and it will go a long way in quest for knowledge of database
fundamentals.

The majority of authors writing books about vendor DBMS products are
generally ignorant about the relational theory and more than half of what is
being written about it is nothing but bullshit. Read the excerpts of some
books in Amazon.com & you'll see what I mean.